Equipping young parents

Pregnancy Care Center helps create foundation for family

Dec. 2, 2012

Ahna and Garrett Roney sought counseling at the Pregnancy Care Center three years ago when they were teenagers and Ahna became pregnant. Garrett said now he can't imagine life without their kids Evan, 1, and Emma, 2. / Valerie Mosley/News-Leader

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ABOUT THIS PROJECT

The News-Leader’s ongoing Every Child project aims to focus attention on critical challenges facing children in our community. This quarter, we’re examining less visible social issues, cultural challenges, customs and beliefs that impact children here. Today’s focus: Parenting skills Solution: The Pregnancy Care Center Number of children served: More than 20,000 youth annually Budget: $1.7 million including grants, partnerships and some private funding Website:PccChoices.orgTo get help

As a high school junior, Garrett Roney could barely think beyond his weekend party plans when circumstances demanded he make a decision about the rest of his life — he and his then-girlfriend Ahna thought she may be pregnant.

Before even telling their parents or friends, they scheduled an appointment at the Pregnancy Care Center on his 17th birthday. They learned Ahna was indeed pregnant, and the terror he already felt exploded.

Garrett had never even held a baby before. His job at Golden Corral couldn’t support a family. Some of his friends suggested he run. But now, three years later, his daughter Emma saying “Daddy” when he comes home makes him so happy he didn’t.

The family would not be where it is today without the Pregnancy Care Center, its staff and its programming, which included counseling for young fathers, he said.

No one told them what to do, but rather showed them what they could do, Garrett said.

“They were encouraging me to stick around and be a father,” said Garrett, now married to Ahna. “That got us off on a good foundation to being a family, rather than me being out of the picture and Ahna being a single parent. Now, we’re the complete package. We’re awesome parents, and I love being a dad.”

Cindi Boston, the center’s chief executive officer, said Garrett and Ahna now serve as program ambassadors and have traveled to Washington, D.C., with her to rally lawmakers around the center’s cause of providing pregnancy and relationship education for the health and wellness of Southwest Missouri youth.

Garrett and Ahna, along with Emma and 1-year-old Evan, are just four among thousands the Pregnancy Care Center reaches annually, Boston said.

Boston said the center — funded through a mix of private money, partnerships and grants, and founded 12 years ago by a group of concerned citizens — has provided more than 14,000 medical and educational services in Springfield the past year. Working with public schools, the center reached another 19,000 students with a message of consciously deciding to have healthy relationships rather than sliding into unhealthy ones.

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“We help a lot of pregnancy centers across the country, and they want our help because what we’re doing works,” Boston said, adding that the center won the Isaiah Award of Excellence last week from CareNet, a network of more than 1,100 pregnancy centers nationwide.

Abortions in the center’s service area of Southwest Missouri are down, as are teen pregnancies, Boston said. In fact, teen pregnancies are down by 20 percent, twice the national average over the past year and a half, she said.

Boston said teenagers need a minimum number of hours of instruction before driving a car, while very little if any of their education addresses how to establish and sustain healthy relationships.

That’s why the center’s programming covers issues as basic as pregnancy testing and as broad as coaching single moms to invest in safe, positive relationships to protect their babies, she said.

Choices Project Coordinator Jay Briggs is an omnipresent figure in schools. When teens see him out, for instance, at the mall, they say, ‘Hey, there’s the sex guy.’ Briggs convenes light but frank conversations. He pulls up online sexual predator maps. He warns the teens about “sexting.” He shares shocking but true stories.

“It blows their minds when we tell them we’re trying to help a sixth-grader pregnant with twins,” Briggs said. “This isn’t about just saying, ‘no.’ It’s about creating boundaries so you don’t have to.”

It’s the “have to” aspect of crisis pregnancies that the programs target, because people considering abortions often feel they have no other choice. They have no idea how they will be able to raise a child.

Boston said the Pregnancy Care Center staff don’t tell anyone what to do, but they do try to help them change their circumstances. Change their circumstances, Boston said, and the young people in crisis usually change their minds about ending their pregnancies.

Boston said the center is faith-based, but does not inject religion in its programming or dealings with the youth it serves unless that is requested.

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“We’re meeting the needs of young people,” Boston said. “People in crisis deserve help, they deserve unconditional support and someone to stand with them through it.”

Nothing quite prepares a person for parenting, but the informative programming and intimate mentoring Garrett received did equip him to face challenges that have broken others much older than him.

He knows the odds now because he’s beaten them.

“Only one out of every five fathers sticks around, or sticks around for just three months until they get sick of staying up all night and changing diapers,” Garrett said. “Without the support and encouragement, the positive influence, I don’t know if I would have stuck around.”

Lately, Garrett has been taking bank programming classes in Monett. He wants to someday work for Jack Henry and Associates, a financial services company. He took the final exam for his first class last week. His last class begins in February. He’ll finish in May.

But back when they first learned of the pregnancy, in the back of their minds, he and Ahna told themselves they wanted to keep their minds open, though they never actually spoke of ending the pregnancy.

Garrett said it would have been so easy to say, “I’m just a kid, how am I going to raise a child?” To take the easy way out. To cheat responsibility.

But then, he saw the ultrasound.

“I just had that awesome feeling!” he said, his voice rising as though suddenly experiencing it again. He said to Ahna, “That’s life inside of you!”

“That was a huge impact on us, to see this little peanut.”

Three years later, and a long way from the frightened, inexperienced teens they were before, the family sat in their living room for a photograph in front of the Christmas tree.

But Emma, who will be 3 in March, decided she’d rather color in her coloring book. Then she decided to cover her face so she couldn’t be photographed. Then shake her piggy bank. Then throw her head back and go limp in Garrett’s arms.

But the young parents seemed unflappable.

Garrett and Ahna played along, telling Emma she’d better not smile, then asking to see her pretty teeth. Soon, though only briefly, Emma was smiling for the camera, her hands neatly in her lap.

This was a beautiful journey that almost wasn’t.

Garrett was offering a testimony recently at a Guys for Christ conference in St. Louis, he said, when he suddenly felt the emotional distance he and his family had traveled.

“I got a little shook up, started to cry,” he recalled, as he talked about that day he and Ahna walked into the center. “Thinking back about it, where we would have been if we hadn’t got there? Just thinking about my kids and how much I love them, I don’t know what I’d do without them.”